World : Chinese companies lead the way at Barcelona Smart City expo

BARCELONA - Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE on Wednesday showcased their innovations and technological solutions used to build interconnected Smart Cities at the aptly-named Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC).

The theme of the 2016 SCEWC, running from Nov 15 to 18, is "cities for citizens", focusing on how to empower citizens in their towns through the use of mobile technology in order to save valuable resources and improve the quality of life.

In this context Huawei and Vodafone on Wednesday showcased a system which will be running water management systems in the Spanish cities of Seville and Malaga in early 2017.

Edwin Diender, the vice president of Huawei's Government and Public Utility Sector, told Xinhua that Smart Cities were "a platform that allows government and industry bodies to drive initiatives and these initiatives can follow up on different programs."

These programs could include, smart education, smart healthcare, safe city for public safety, government services, as well as mobile broadband and banking.

Diender said that Huawei compares "smart city" to a living organism with an "intelligent operation center, which is like the nerve center of smart cities, which controls and connects all kinds of information."

Meanwhile, China's Ministry of Housing and Urban Development has used the SCEWC to organize a China Forum, an event that gathers leading players and companies to examine the strategies carried out by China in order to implement smart solutions in Chinese cities.